First Post: A Year in Review
I love the picture above. Taken in Hawaii during July, this picture captures one of my favorite days with my wife and friends.
Recent Growth
Welcome to the beginning of a new chapter in my journey. This chapter begins at the start of 2025 after a year of nose down engineering at Chase. A year ago I had set goals that basically can be summarized by kick ass and learn as much as possible. When I reflect on the outcomes I feel proud, accomplished, humbled and eager for more.
I think few major transformations happened. First I feel that I rounded out my experience as a Mid-Senior level engineer. I took on hard projects, helped to scale up a distributed system, enforced standard, and managed a small team. Of course I still need to improve in all these areas (and more) but I feel much more confident in my abilities.
Secondly, I came to understand some of my weaknesses and the types of traps that I allow myself to fall into. I could go into more detail but I’d rather summarize my mindset: I now prioritize understanding the bigger picture, the context, and the patterns used while solving a problem. I now prioritize working on my writing and communication skills higher than I had previously.
Lastly, I now think more about my own place in the bigger context more. I have a tougher time explaining this one. It comes from the feeling of to expand myself. I think that in order to expand I want to know my own context. If I have a specific goal, can I really break down why I have this goal? If I feel passionate about a specific project, why do I feel that way? Basically, I want to understand my own “whys?” and gain a better ability to take a step back.
Building a house
In one of the opening paragraphs to this site I talk about the analogy of a house. I talk about how I believe that a house changes and shapes you while also collecting you. When I look back at distinct points in my life, I can often remember how my home or my room looked. It’s clear to me that the experiences were shaped in at least some small way by my physical surrounding and vice versa. I feel the need to have a similar space for my digital home. A place I go back to, attempt to renovate/improve, a place that collects and reflects.
A scene from Naruto that consistently pops back into my brain talks about the need to focus your mind or energy on a designated point. In the scene, the characters basically talk about the feeling of looking at a blank page. When you stare at a blank page your mind easily wanders, not knowing where to look or trying to find something to focus on. (episode 88)
Instead if you have a dot draw in the middle of the page, the eye can stay attentive and focused. I think that a similar lesson can be drawn about our life. Without a focal point our ability to tap into our potential remains limited. In Naruto, the character says this “allows you to tap into unimaginable power”. By comparison having a focal point to center your energy can lead you to places you never imagined. These could be in your career, your relationships, or your other skills.
A focal point can be physical or mental, it can be a literal house or a metaphorical house, it can be intentional or not. Ultimately I think we rarely lack a focal point all together. Last year my metaphorical house was at work and that’s not a bad thing. However, now I feel similar to the first time moving out of my parents. I have a new home to grow, even if I still have many of my things to return back to on the weekend. (Reversed in this analogy).
New Person, Same Old Excitement
Another memory that consistently and seemingly randomly pops into my head includes the first time I remember feeling excited about programming. I had been searching for a career change after graduating with a degree in Biology and after about a year working in a laboratory setting. At this point, I had never really felt excited in an academic or learning sense. The challenge of what to do with my life felt more daunting than ever. I had heard of people enjoying their work, but the feeling was hard to imagine.
A friend had then told me about how his brother-in-law had made a career change into software after attending a bootcamp. He explained how people could attend a short program of 3-6 months, coming out the other end with a new career and a lot more money. The idea became too tempting not to look into.
Fast forward two weeks later, after discovering the online course cs50 by Harvard, I found my calling. I can picture the moment now seeing the output of problem 1: mario in the shell console.
The simple program, written in C, prints an upside-down half pyramid where the base size depends on user input. As simple as it may be, this program changed my life. It required me to struggle, to problem solve, to build and to learn. My heart raced when I finally had it correct.
I hope to continue a lot of that excitement of learning and tinkering here.